44 Percent of Murdered Women Killed By “Partners,” DOH Finds

September 9, 2008

Poor, black, Hispanic, and foreign-born women, and those between 20 and 29 years of age, lead among local victims of death by intimate partner violence — or IPV, as the Department has it. (New York has a higher poor, black, Hispanic, and foreign-born female population rate in general than the rest of the U.S., but less than a fifth of both New York and U.S. women are 20-29 years of age.)

The South Bronx, North, Central and South Brooklyn, and the Rockaways were the IPV homicide hotspots. Only 15 percent of these victims had a court order of protection, which the Department obviously regards as a hint.

But given the murderers’ profile, court orders might not have helped many of the victims. More disturbing stats below the fold.

Exes represented only 13 percent of IPV murderers, with husbands constituting a flat 50 percent and boyfriends at 36 percent. (Boyfriends take the lead in non-fatal IPV hospitalizations.) The report doesn’t specify what percentage of these were live-in husbands. Most fatal and non-fatal assaults took place in the home “of the victim or the perpetrator.”

Guns and knives were the killers’ weapons of choice, but women who were sent to the emergency room rather than to the morgue were overwhelmingly delivered by what the DOH describes merely as “physical force.”

As if this weren’t depressing enough, for 2002 and 2003 it was reported that pregnant women were hospitalized for IPV at nearly three times the rate of non-pregnant women, though the DOH reasons that pregnant victims might be more likely to go to the hospital than those who are not.

The Department recommends routine screening for IPV in emergency rooms and doctors’ offices, and community education.